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Fishing for the Future: The Why and How of Nature’s Most Abundant Protein Source

Event Date:Jul 25, 2012

Time:09:30 AM to 09:30 AM America/New York

Location:Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Information

As fisheries globally are on the verge of collapse due to overfishing, effects of global climate change, ocean acidification, and marine pollution, the donor community is faced with a perfect storm of challenges for food security worldwide. One must ask the question: Can we feed the world without saving wild fish stocks? The importance of the fisheries sector (both capture fisheries and aquaculture) to the food security and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide can scarcely be over-stated, yet globally it is severely underfunded and its importance is under-emphasized. The fisheries sector is integrally linked to virtually all development objectives, from education to democracy and governance, to public health (including nutrition and HIV) to economic growth. The sector employs more than 10 million people on the African continent alone and is the only source of animal protein for 1 in 5 people. Nearly 80% of fish consumed in developed counties is sourced in the developing world, and fish products are among the most traded commodities. The net export value of fish products from developing countries ($17.4 billion in 2002) is greater than the combined net export value of rice, coffee, sugar, and tea. This talk highlighted the challenges and opportunities related to global fisheries, with some examples of USAID programs in West Africa and Southeast Asia that are helping to turn the tide on fisheries sector reform and coastal and marine resources management.

Fishing for the Future: The Why and How of Nature’s Most Abundant Protein Source

Bryan Gillooly

United States Agency for International Development

Bryan Gillooly is an Agriculture Development Officer from DLI Class 18 and destined for USAID/Colombia in 2012. Gillooly's work experience includes oyster aquaculture research at the Molluscan Broodstock Program at Hatfield Marine... more Science Center in Newport Oregon, and marine and estuarine fishery research for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Florence, Oregon. He also served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador from 2005 to 2008, working in public health, aquaculture, agriculture, and animal husbandry. Gillooly comes to USAID with a Masters of Agriculture in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture, and a Graduate Certificate in Marine Resource Management from Oregon State University. He also has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Arizona. less

Richard Volk

United States Agency for International Development

Richard Volk joined USAID in 1998 and provides technical and managerial support for a variety of river basin and coastal resources management activities. During his 30+ years in natural resources management he has worked in... more over 50 countries, providing technical assistance on numerous water and coastal resources management, fisheries, climate change, biodiversity conservation, and environmental planning programs. Before joining USAID, Volk was executive director of the Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program, a five-year scientific assessment and consensus-building effort to develop a comprehensive conservation and management plan for three of the seven major estuaries on the Texas coast in the United States. He now provides technical assistance to USAID Missions on the design and implementation of integrated natural resources management initiatives worldwide, with particular focus on the water-climate-food nexus related to river basins and their coastal/marine ecosystems. Richard holds a BSc degree in Biology and an MPA in Development Management. less

Comments

Thank you to everyone who participated in the July 25 Ag Sector Council Seminar on "Fishing for the Future"! We have posted some questions and comments below from our webinar participants that we were unable to address during the event.

Please feel free to respond to any of these questions as well as share any new thoughts. We look forward to continuing the conversation!

Thank you for seeing the responsibility inherent in this question. As a start, it would be important to know where and under what circumstances the lights will be used. Is the target fishery under any kind of management plan or regulations? Is light fishing permissible? If so, are there seasonal or spatial restrictions? Are there lumens restrictions on the lights that are legal?

In the Ghana case, for example, light fishing is now illegal, but very powerful lights continue to be used and enforcement is sporadic at best. Those activities are undermining the efforts of a growing number of informed fishers who want to see meaningful reforms for their sector.

Efforts to move people away from capture fisheries should not be undertaken until controls on the fishery have been put in place in a meaningful way and attention has been given to enhancing fisheries productivity. Registration, licensing, and other ways to limit entry to the fishery must be in place and effective prior to offering incentives to existing fishers to leave the fishery, or the newly created vacuum will simply be filled by other new entrants to the fishery. For this reason, alternative livelihood schemes, boat buyback schemes, and other approaches must be fully considered for their unintended consequences. Aquaculture, as an alternative livelihood scheme, should be considered in the same manner. Fishing and aquaculture are two different lifestyles and studies have shown that many fishers are not drawn to aquaculture.

Yes, certainly in some countries more so than in others. USAID investments in the Galapagos Islands, for example, included a substantial component for several years on helping to develop and improve control and quarantine procedures (for humans and cargo traveling both to the islands and inter-island). And USAID’s own environmental regulations (known as “Reg 216” in the Agency) require environmental screening and assessment before foreign assistance funds can be programmed. It is a high priority of the Agency to prevent the introduction of invasive species and/or to control the escape of invasive species from facilities where we work.

The globalization of trade in fish and fish products is a result of simple supply/demand economics. As fish stocks have been depleted (in many cases to the point of collapse) in the developed world, industrial fleets found new profit in the less regulated and less over-fished fishing grounds of the developing countries. Fortunately, developing countries are beginning to exert stricter controls on fish stocks within their EEZs and are becoming more adept at negotiating more equitable access agreements and fees for foreign fleets wishing to fish their waters.

There are many more small-scale fisheries than USAID can directly assist. How does USAID target a region for aid and what is the return on that investment (ie the value recovered in the second example from your presentation)?

USAID programming in any country is driven by a Country Development Cooperation Strategy that seeks to strategically position investments based on a number of factors, not the least of which are need and opportunity. Thus, host government interest in and commitment to fisheries sector reform is a pre-requisite. We also seek opportunity to leverage our investments through collaborative synergy with other donors. In addition, USAID must adhere to certain conditions given to the Agency by Congress that, for example, determine the primary focus for a given program (e.g., for food security, for biodiversity conservation, for climate adaptation, etc).

We will hopefully be able to organize a webinar on aquaculture this fall. Stay tuned!

Excellent joint presentation. Great to see small-scale fishers issues taken seriously that aquatic foods are more than just protein and what needs to be done to ensure that those that need it most continue to have access to fish.

A few points for discussion follow. Very well done and FAO appreciates the use of this information. Participants will be interested in the recent State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture available on our web-site (http://www.fao.org/fishery/en). As the conference explained, small scale fisheries are now high on the global agenda. Please also see the recent report of our Committee on Fisheries (http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i2755t/i2755t00.pdf) where we are developing guidelines and perhaps another mechanism to deal with the issues of small scale fisheries.

The conference concentrated on marine fisheries. However, for food security, inland fisheries are probably more important. Countries do not realize this and our information on the sector is very poor. We think the production could be about four times higher than officially reported. Here, the competition for water is extreme and lack of information makes development decisions difficult.

One point on protected areas: this is still controversial. If we can’t manage a single fishery how can we manage something as complex as a protected area? Estimates of cost of managing and enforcing protected areas in California were underestimated by about two orders of magnitude. Regarding using forage fish for human feed rather than fish feed, this too is controversial and some studies have shown that people who sell these fish for feed make more money and can then buy more food than if they sold the fish for food in the first place. Also, fishers and boats would need to undergo costs and improve handling of the catch if the fish were to be destined for human consumption rather than feed. Hope there will be a record of this very useful and timely meeting and that there will be additional webinars.

Certainly inland fisheries are critical to the food security of millions of people in many countries, and we thank you for reiterating this point. And we couldn’t agree more that central to the sustainability of inland fisheries (and of course estuarine-dependent fisheries and in large part aquaculture too) is integrated water resources management.

While agreeing to your general view that the (sustainable) management of marine protected areas (MPAs) is not a straight-forward task and that there are numerous examples worldwide to prove that point, we do believe that they are an important tool in the ecosystem-approach to fisheries management and one that is probably more suited in certain places more than others. For example, the scale, location, ownership, and governance arrangements for MPAs are important determinants of success (among others). The management of MPAs need not be as complex as we might make them to be and, in many places in the developing world, the community pride that comes with having ownership and responsibility for one or more MPAs is an important driver of further stakeholder demand for government to take their enforcement responsibilities more seriously. There are several studies that illustrate the importance of MPAs to fisheries management, food security and poverty reduction:

Readers interested in this question will also want to read about an important study published in April 2012 by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force. The report offers an estimate of the total economic value of forage fish stocks globally, and the contribution they make to commercial fisheries when not over-fished and left in the ocean to fulfill the trophic level for which they have evolved. The report can be found here.

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